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In celebration of Pride, Artsy happily presents the Artsy Impact Auction: Artists for Pride, benefiting the Ali Forney Center. New works by a diverse group of emerging and established artists will be bid on through June 29th at 12 pm EST. TM Davy, Didier William, Jo Messer, Kyle Meyer, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Erin M. Riley, Emma Kohlmann, Caitlin Cherry, Elizabeth Glaessner, Jordan Nassar, Haas Brothers, Vickie Vainionpää, Leilah Babirye, Darryl Westly, and Nedia Were have come together in allyship to support the cause by way of sharing their talents.
Vickie Vainionpåå, Soft Body Dynamics 111, 2023
Ali Forney Center’s mission is to protect LGBTQIA+ youth from homelessness and to empower them with the tools needed to live independently. Through this partnership, the auction will directly support the critical care, direction, education, and career services that Ali Forney Center offers to these at-risk homeless youth.
Nedia Were, The Black Swan, 2022
We had the opportunity to speak with Simon Haas of the Haas Brothers, who have their Fairies Witherspoon piece featured in Artists for Pride (seen in the lead image). “This piece is from a body of work we call Fairy Berries. Each of these pieces is a little like a Faberge Egg, small and ornate,” said Simon. “These pieces are little meditations – they take a really, really long time and a steady hand, and the resulting piece is an opulent little world of its own.”
Kate Pincus Whitney, Gertrude Stein and Slice B Toklas Muss
“A lot of the work we make is playful, but an equal amount of it is intensely process-based. When I am doing beadwork or making process-intensive projects like this I am very much in a meditative state of mind,” Simon shared. “This kind of work is almost necessary for me and my mental health.
Leilah Babirye, Lady Nabuuso, 2016
Measuring 10 1/4 × 4 1/2 × 4 1/2-inches, Fairies Witherspoon is hand thrown and slip trailed porcelain detailed with gold lustre and brass plate. The underside is stamped with “HAAS BROTHERS 2020”, and it’s accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by Nikolai and Simon Haas.
Kyle Meyer, Unidentified 91a, 2023
“Being gay myself, and having experienced first hand the challenges that come with that, it is really meaningful to me to be able to support my community. I can’t imagine the added difficulty of facing homelessness caused by or made more difficult by being LGBTQIA+. This is a truly important cause, particularly in this time of increasing intolerance.” Simon went on to add that he plans to “continue being a vocally out gay man and advocating for others in my community. It is so important that we make ourselves heard and support each other in our fight for equality. The LGBTQIA+ community is not a monolith, we are a collection of communities, but by coming together and advocating for each other we can accomplish so much more than we could on our own.”
Jo Messer, Show up whenever, 2023
To learn more about Artsy Impact Auction: Artists for Pride or place a bid, visit artsy.net.
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Matt and Sam explore the “crisis of masculinity” in America through books on the subject by Senator Josh Hawley and Harvard political theorist Harvey Mansfield.
Journalist Matt Taibbi made a name for himself in 2010 with his brutal takedown of the finance companies that orchestrated and profited from the crippling mortgage meltdown, which ran in Rolling Stone. His description of Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," has gone down in the annals of investigative journalism history. — Read the rest
Froggie regrets. A precious ticket to a Chicago Bulls game. A conversation about AI and nature. A profile of the world’s most famous unknown writer. And to finish, a look back to last Friday and a St. Patrick’s Day tradition.
Anne Fadiman | Harper’s Magazine | February 10, 2023 | 5,816 words
“There are two kinds of pets — the ones you choose and the ones that happen to you,” Anne Fadiman writes as she considers her family’s various pets, a menagerie that included a goldfish, a hamster, guinea pigs, a dog named Typo, and Bunky, an African clawed frog that the family raised from a tadpole. In eulogizing Bunky, who looked “as if a regular frog had been bleached and then put in a panini press,” Fadiman remarks on his noble species, one that helped spawn (ahem) the first widely established pregnancy test, earned a Nobel Prize for a British biologist who used an African clawed frog to clone the first vertebrate, and helped establish that reproduction can be possible in zero gravity after a trip on the space shuttle Endeavor. All this, from a pet who was defined by not being a dog: “Bunky was the anti-Typo. An unpettable pet. Cool to the touch. Squishy, but not soft. Undeniably slimy. Impervious to education. A poor hiking companion. Not much of a companion at all, really. Couldn’t be taken out of his aquarium and placed on a lap.” Fadiman’s piece will make you laugh and make you think more carefully about your role as a pet owner. —KS
Justin Heckert | ESPN | March 7, 2023 | 5,462 words
I don’t follow the NBA, and I’m not one for memorabilia of any variety. But leave it to Justin Heckert, one of my favorite feature writers, to make me give a damn about an old, untorn ticket to a Chicago Bulls game that happened around the time I was born. Heckert spends time with Mike Cole, who as a college freshman attended Michael Jordan’s first game with the Bulls and saved the ticket because he’s the kind of guy who does that. (Cole has a plastic bin with “MIKE’S MEMORY BOX” written on the side, filled with ephemera from various sporting events). Nearly 40 years after the Bulls game, a span of time in which Jordan became one of the most celebrated athletes in history, a man with a Glock strapped to his hip came to Cole’s house in an armored car. He was there to retrieve the ticket, which Cole had agreed to sell at auction, where it was expected to bring in as much as $1 million. But the story Heckert tells isn’t about Cole getting rich (though that does happen). Really, it’s about the meaning we invest in objects and how it can change as we do, as the world does. —SD
Claire L. Evans | Grow | March 14, 2023 | 4,203 words
In this fascinating interview with Claire L. Evans, Ways of Being author James Bridle shares their perspective on the role of AI today — “to broaden our idea of intelligence” — and a vision for a mindful, collaborative future that ultimately decenters humans and makes more space for nonhuman beings and animals. “I don’t think there is such a thing as an artificial intelligence,” says Bridle. “There are multiple intelligences, many ways of doing intelligence.” Intelligence is relational; it’s not something that exists within beings of things, but rather between them. As a gardener — someone who loves feeling their hands in the soil, and working with the small organisms within it — I love their conversation on gardening, and how humans can apply that same deep awareness to technology. I appreciate, too, their thoughts on resilience and the transmission of knowledge in a time of radical change on Earth. (If you enjoy this Q&A, combine it with two previous Top 5 favorites: “The Great Forgetting,” a read on resilience and the environment, and “What Counts As Seeing,” another interview focused on the nonhuman and natural world.) —CLR
Jason Kehe | Wired | March 23, 2023 | 4,044 words
For someone who’s published countless books, and sold an enormous multiple of that countlessness, Brandon Sanderson is anything but a household name. Unless you live in a fantasy house, that is. Still, the most prolific living genre fiction writer has never been the subject of a magazine profile, which makes Jason Kehe’s treatment all the more enjoyable. A year ago, I picked Kehe’s piece about simulation theory for this roundup, and the two stories share a damn-the-torpedoes willingness to fuse exegetical acuity with a chatty, even flippant POV. What works for a philosophical essay works for a portrait; Kehe’s quest isn’t to capture Sanderson as much as it is to capture why people love Sanderson so much, and what animates his sprawling fictional worlds. That means casting away the false pieties and stannery that infect so many “celebrity” profiles and instead relishing in the man’s banalities. Yet, the barbs are tipped with love, and everyone — the voracious fans, Sanderson’s cliché-spouting characters, and Sanderson himself — shines as their truest selves. —PR
Harrison Scott Key | The Bitter Southerner | March 14, 2023 | 5,200 words
Last Friday night, I had two pints of Guinness and went home, content with a St. Patrick’s Day well celebrated. Apparently, I know nothing about how to observe the feast. Harrison Scott Key enlightened me in this delightful essay about the drunken debauchery that is the holiday’s annual parade in Savannah, Georgia. I loved his raucous account of trying to claim a spot for the parade: Akin to the Sacking of Constantinople, “insults and elbows and fits [are] thrown” until everyone settles into their position, dons a green feather boa, and makes merry. The prose is so vivid you can almost hear the noise, touch the sweaty crowds, and taste the booze. I could also feel the camaraderie — over the years of attending the parade, Scott Key finds lasting friendships. A transplant to Savannah, and initially lonely and unable to find his place in a new community, this annual tradition helps Scott Key to discover his people. After all, as he writes, “it’s easier to love people you’ve watched vomit into the hellmouth of a portable toilet at two in the morning.” —CW
Jia Tolentino | The New Yorker | March 20, 2023 | 4,772 words
This is a fascinating look at GLP-1 drugs, which, when injected, create a sense of satiety. I appreciated Tolentino’s exploration of the continual shift in our acceptance of different body shapes, as well as the impact of this particular trend. A piece that made me think about society, as much as weight. —CW
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Reporting on movie studios developing their own cinematic universes is like checking a "days without incident" sign at work. No matter how long the gap between incidents is, you know that another one is inevitably waiting right around the corner. Granted, since the MCU has started to incur more criticism from fans and critics alike, the endless conversations about every studio developing a cinematic universe have thankfully stalled. — Read the rest
Emoni Bates played one season at Eastern Michigan, in his hometown, Ypsilanti, but is expected to enter the upcoming N.B.A. draft.
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This week we’ve made a rare exception, rather than a single individual we’re talking to twin brothers Jordan and Steven Neman of House of Léon. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, the two realized that the interior design market was missing creatively designed pieces available at an affordable price point. From there, furniture and home decor company House of Léon was born in 2022.
Since opening the doors a year ago, Jordan and Steven have launched two full collections with a third on the way this spring. With a focus on regions, cultures, and concepts, the brand believes every piece of a collection needs to work with one another to allow for mixing and matching.
But House of Léon is more than furniture. The brand also releases sculptural decor pieces based on the ceramic work of Jordan. When furniture and decor pieces come together with affordability, clients can uniquely express themselves within a living space in a delightful way.
Today, Jordan and Steven Neman are joining us for Friday Five!
Jordan + Steven Neman \\\ Photo: Still Vika
Photo courtesy BDDW
One of our favorite furniture designers is Tyler Hayes and his team at BDDW. It’s fascinating to see the creations that a multidisciplinary artist like himself is able to make. His use of mixed media and materials across pieces show a level of craftsmanship that we think is quite incredible.
Photo: Eric Roinestad
Jordan’s favorite ceramicist has always been Eric Roinestad, and his work inspired Jordan to get into ceramics himself. Roinestad’s sculptural pieces, made using a clay he makes himself, show a level of refinement you don’t see quite often in ceramics.
Photo: Batten & Kamp
Our favorite gallery for furniture is Love House in NYC. Jared and Aric do an amazing job of sourcing incredible designers. A piece from their collection that we think is worth highlighting is the Steel + Stone Lounge Chair by Batten & Kamp. It’s a true show-stopper.
Photo: Carla Cascales Alimbau
For art, we have always loved The Tappan Collective. The furniture selected for a space can only take you so far – it’s the art that sets the stage for those pieces to shine and create the perfect setting.
Photo courtesy Azotea
Outside of the US, in Mexico City, the gallery Azotea does such a great job of restoring vintage pieces and creating new designs of their own.
Delphina Candle \ The Delphina Sculpture Candle, inspired by the figure and shape of the feminine form, brings an abstract and artistic touch to any space. Based on the work the co-founders’ mother, Firoozeh Neman, the Delphina Candle is a celebration of the glory and power of the female figure. “The jagged edges allude to the strength and power of women who are so often illustrated as delicate in nature,” describes the artist. \\\ Photo: Still Vika Photography
Shinto Dining Chair \ This summer, we came across the 13th century art of “Kakishibu,” the traditional Japanese dying technique that pulls color from fermented persimmons. The dye was used on materials from wood to fabric and became the inspiration behind our favorite piece from our new Kyoto Collection, the Shinto Dining Chair. A quarter inch thick leather wraps a hand-crafted frame, with a leather seat that will patina as it ages, just like the vintage pieces you grow to love more and more. \\\ Photo: Michael Piliero
Face Vase \ The Face Vase is the first piece of décor based on the ceramic work of co-founder, Jordan. An accident in the studio led to what looked like a shoulder on his vase, and the head was sculpted as a response to that happy accident. \\\ Photo: Michael Clifford Photography
Sofita Coffee Table \ The Sofita Coffee Table uses a soft, natural stone with a raw edge to create a piece that feels organic to any space. \\\ Photo: Michael Clifford Photography
Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, argues that the Justice Department has victimized and attempted to silence conservative parents.
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